The name of the café was Pourquoi Pas Espresso Bar, and so briefly did I plan to visit that I double-parked my car on top of an Amherst St. slush bank. I was only going in to buy some coffee. Or so I thought …

I nodded to the two hipster baristas working the counter and admired the mason jars filled with coffee, trying to decide whether this week’s beans would be from Honduras, Ethopia, Kenya, El Salvador or Guatemala. I flipped the tags on the coffee jars and noticed the producer, roasting procedure and altitude at which the coffee was grown were listed alongside the specific code for the variety and the roasting date. We’re miles from a can of Maxwell House here. No doubt about it, Pourquoi Pas is one of the city’s growing number of Third Wave coffee shops.

A term coined in 2002 by Los Angeles food writer Jonathan Gold, Third Wave coffee can best be described as follows: The first wave of coffee in North America was the mass-produced brands — think Folgers — that purchased beans as a commodity (like wheat) and sold them (usually ground) in supermarkets. The second wave was the chain coffee shops like Starbucks and Second Cup that specialized in a line of coffee beverages with negligible attention paid to the origin of the beans. The Third Wave refers to small-scale coffee roasters who treat coffee as an artisanal foodstuff that reflects its “terroir” (place where it is grown). Coffees are sourced directly from a specific area or farm. Relationships with coffee farmers are commonplace. Montreal’s Camellia Senensis, known for direct-sourcing its world-class teas, and Geneviève Grandbois, who fabricates bean-to-bar chocolate from her very own cocoa plantation in Costa Rica, share this ideology.

The best analogy for Third Wave coffee beans would be grapes for winemaking, as their transformers share the belief that the climate and area in which the coffee or grape is grown has a huge effect on the taste of the final product. The ultimate goal is to extract the purest reflection of the bean from its “journey” from bush to cup, and relish the specific flavours each has to offer.

But the Third Wave philosophy doesn’t end there. Microroasting (in small batches) to enhance rather than obliterate flavours is key, as is freshness. Beans roasted as far away as Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., and even exotic locations such as Calgary and Toronto, are shipped weekly. Though many Third Wave coffee houses, such as Montreal’s Café St-Henri, source and roast their own beans, most Third Wave-style cafés purchase their coffees from Third Wave coffee roasters in Canada and the U.S. And when said coffee is brewed in-house (most Third Wave coffee roasters operate retail cafés), it’s prepared following the most meticulous brewing methods.

Third Wave coffee shops focus primarily on three kinds of coffee: espresso, siphon and filter. To Third Wave baristas, a latte isn’t a coffee, it’s a beverage. Having more or less given up on pulling a killer espresso shot at home, and having neither the time, patience or fancy equipment to brew siphon coffee on a whim, I’ve turned my attentions to mastering the perfect cup of filter (a.k.a. “pourover”) coffee.

I never knew filtered coffee could be magnificent until I tasted some made by Café Myriade’s co-owner and chief barista, Anthony Benda. Using some pretty swish beans from the Calgary-based Phil & Sebastien coffee roasters, Benda made coffee that tasted of red fruit and chocolate. Chocolate and fruit? Yes!

On the website of Pilot Coffee roasters in Toronto (the roasters that sell to Pourquoi Pas), the write-up on their Ethiopia Sidama Natural coffee includes such descriptors as:

“There are unmissable, intense, over-the-top aromas of blueberry and apricot that linger and envelop your palate as you drink. The syrupy body moderates the acidity and perfectly complements the sweet fruitiness and chocolate that carries all the way into the finish and long after. This is a coffee you could have for breakfast with a heaping pile of blueberry buttermilk pancakes; you could almost use it in place of maple syrup it is so sweet.”

Further proof to the close-to-fanatical attention paid to coffee during harvesting and processing even before it hits the roaster is summed up in these sentences (in which the coffee is referred to as cherries when it’s in its fruit “berry” stage):

“Only the ripest cherries were handpicked and then they were put on raised beds to dry the same day. They were then moved every two hours to ensure even drying for the next 15-17 days. After hulling and just prior to export they are subject to extra sorting to further increase quality.”

This isn’t just coffee making, this is religion!

So back to me at Pourquoi Pas with the car double-parked and the intention to pick up some coffee. Tyler, the wool bonnet-sporting barista who served me, was kind enough to point me to the beans best suited to filter coffee. So just as I was about to hand over my $17 (this coffee is marvellous, but it sure ain’t cheap), I thought that maybe my pourover method could use some fine-tuning. Tyler asked a few questions: Was I grinding my coffee at home (essential)? Did I have a scale to weigh the ideal amount of coffee per cup (15g)? Did I have a goose neck kettle to allow me to pour the water over the grinds evenly (no, and I sure wasn’t forking over for a new one)? And, finally, he asked: “Are you using bleached or unbleached filters?” Aha! This one I was doing right. I was using those unbleached environment-friendly filters. Score! Not so, said Tyler, as the unbleached filters make the coffee taste like a brown paper bag. What I needed was the Japanese oxygen-whitened filters that impart no added flavour. They’re a bit more expensive, but as I’m spending a pretty penny on the coffee already, what’s the diff?

In the end, I stocked up on some primo beans, which I now buy weekly to assure freshness, and unearthed my grinder from my small-appliance graveyard. I’ve kept my Breville kettle, and I use an old basket filter lined with my tasteless white Japanese paper filters to make my coffee.

I measure the recommended 15g of coffee beans per cup, I grind the beans immediately before brewing and I rinse the filter with boiling water before adding the grinds, which is done to wash away any bits of dust, fluff or non-coffee-compatible debris that may have snuck in somewhere between Tokyo and Montreal. I boil the filtered water and let it sit for 20 seconds, and then I pour enough water over the grains until they are just saturated. I wait about 40 seconds longer, then begin the second pour, gradually adding water to the “bed” of the grinds (that’s barista talk) all the while avoiding the edges.

I could be even more of a stickler if I were a die-hard aficionado, but, truth be told, I’m pretty groggy when I’m going through this ritual in the morning, so some days I — gasp! — forget to rinse the filter (somewhere in Portland, Ore., a barista flubbed an espresso shot thinking of that).

So, all taken, is this whole coffee rigmarole worth it? Yes! Third Wave coffee has less torque and greater aromatics, a definite sweetness and real complexity. Think berries (especially blueberries), currants, chocolate, lemon, toffee, peach with a nice hit of that great flavour booster, acidity. And as for the “creamy body” often mentioned in the adjective-heavy Third Wave coffee literature, uh-huh, I’m on board with that, too.

In the end, my time with Tyler (and so many of this city’s passionate baristas) provided an essential coffee education. I recently splurged on a new grinder (the coffee-hipster-approved Baratza Encore, about $150), I’ve braved snowstorms to get my coffee and I’m even considering that goose-necked kettle to improve my pour.

My next goal? To determine whether to diminish or increase my grind size to get my brew time below the requisite three-minute mark.

Yeah, okay, I’m obsessed.

Below, you’ll find a list of some of my favourite of the city’s Third Wave-style coffee houses, where you can buy coffee beans or simply enjoy your favourite coffee or coffee “beverage” (a.k.a. latte) on site. Some also sell coffee-making paraphernalia. Take note: only Saint-Henri roasts on the premises. As for favourite coffee brands, I’m a big fan of beans by Saint-Henri (Montreal), 49th Parallel (Vancouver), Phil & Sebastien (Calgary), Pilot (Toronto), Metropolis and Intelligentsia (both Chicago). As there are new brands constantly hitting the market and baristas tend to be a fickle bunch, even with their favourite brands, according to particular “roasting profiles” employed, ask your barista about his or her preference for your type of coffee, filter, espresso, etc.

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